Le Vie dei Tesori returns to Catania and Acireale

The Streets of Treasures promotes this year a Catania its sixth edition, exceptionally opening two ancient spa complexes, but also forgotten churches, noble palaces, private collections, and a series of nature experiences, in contact with animals, on lava and in gardens. With the neighbor Acireale which participates with a series of new places and workshops. Here's the festival again, so, and Saturday 7 October to Sunday 5 November, five weekends, always Saturday and Sunday. A new edition of the "reappropriation of beauty" festival that tells the story of the entire island.

THE STREETS OF TREASURES FESTIVAL

The project, born in 2006 in Palermo, it progressively extended to the whole of Sicily and beyond. Beyond 450 treasures that can be visited in over two months of festival, with a digital and smart system. Noble palaces, secret terraces, monasteries, churches and crypts, gardens, science museums. Places mostly usually closed or untold. The festival offers citizens an alliance in the name of culture, of knowledge, of the reappropriation of spaces. And on the contrary, offers tourists the opportunity to visit open cities, tell, full of new perspectives. A civil commitment, even before being cultural.

This year it welcomes the satellite project back Lands of Treasures: they open cellars, vineyards, oil mills, dairies, nurseries, in collaboration with the regional Department of Agriculture, thirty Sicilian companies, mostly third generation, all to discover and visit. It will also be possible to visit Catania from Palermo with AutoService buses.

THE PROGRAM

CATANIA. If the city will be the owner of ancient spas, hidden churches, noble palaces, the province will be a true immersion in nature. Many places are back by popular demand, in the program built for the second year by Alessandra Fabretti, created with the collaboration of Common, from the Diocese and of Archaeological park of Catania and Aci Valley. The visits start right from the institutional headquarters par excellence, Palace of the Elephants which hides eighteenth-century frescoes, baroque decorations and works of art. The two ancient spa complexes in the heart of the city are highly anticipated: the Terme dell'Adrizzo, remains of a Roman complex probably from the 2nd century; the Rotonda thermal baths identified by the prince of Biscari under a Byzantine church, the Ardizzone Gioeni Institute with its neo-Gothic cloister and a small church with strange mosaics, but also the new garden which will be visited for the first time and which was recovered with the help of the Sigonella military.

Another nice surprise will be there church of the Holy Trinity which is almost always closed: against a background of organ and violin, an eighteenth-century jewel with a choir that will make you fall in love. And the sanctuary of Santa Maria dell'Aiuto which houses an icon of the Madonna and Child, believed miraculous and escaped the earthquake. An unprecedented place is also the Multimedia tactile hub where the monuments are reconstructed – from the Colosseum to Stonehenge to name just two – all worth touching

And here we are experiences, strong point of the festival, a way to take back the space, dedicating time to yourself. Maybe discovering that there is one on Etna Gjmàla, a breeding farm of… dromedaries and that these “camelids” don't feel like foreigners at all. The Japanese Shiitake mushrooms grown among chestnut chips in the lava caves - which last year were one of the novelties of the festival - have grown and provide shelter for bees (an extraordinary project that combines sustainability with well-being, signs it Basilio Busà): they will let you taste both the honey and the jam and the chestnut beer.

ACIREALE

Acireale this year he has built a dense and beautiful program, ten places and even seventeen experiences, with the support of Common. The exhibition will be open to the public from Treasure Museum of the Basilica of San Sebastiano, four rooms that house the jewels with which the simulacrum of the saint carried in procession is adorned; but a real surprise will be the Episcopal seminary where you will visit the classrooms with mineral finds and stuffed animals, the ancient library and the "red" chapel and they will explain what an epidiascope is, projection device from the early 1900s. It's still, the places that are a certainty, the Zelantea library with his 250 thousand volumes, incunabula, manuscripts, rare editions; the church of San Benedetto with gold trim on the walls and ceiling; the baroque Saint Francis of Paola, also built thanks to the forced labor of prisoners; the delicate and "feminine" eighteenth-century church of San Raffaele designed for a Dominican college.

Here are the experiences: starting from the most particular ones, like the ancient cosmetics lesson of Clara Russo in Santa Venera al Pozzo. But you will be able to listen to a famous violinist like Sebastiano Battiato in the Basilica of St. Peter and Paul; follow a sensorial journey through wine and aromatic plants in the former convent Batia of the Archangel Gabriel (and you will taste freshly picked pomegranate juice). And then follow the trail of the "nevaroli" who once made ice cream and sorbet; you will discover the papier-mâché processing methods with a "master" like Alberto Siracusa and the children will model the clay with the archaeologists.

The program is rich The Streets of Treasures

Gives Villa Maria you can easily reach Catania by car and by train (the railway station is just a few meters away) in about 20 minutes. Acireale, The elementary particles, it's just a short drive away 15 minutes. The elementary particles, The elementary particles, 10 minutes.